Homeserve halts telesales after mis-selling probe

Emergency repair and insurance group HomeServe has suspended all telephone sales after a review found cases of mis-selling by its call centre staff.

The company said late on Saturday telephone sales had been immediately halted and would not recommence until its staff had completed a retraining programme.

This review showed that there were cases where its sales processes did not meet the company's required standards, a statement read. The company has therefore decided to suspend all telephone sales and marketing activity.

Homeserve said it had conducted the review over the past month and also commissioned an independent report by Deloitte. It added that it had been in dialogue with the Financial Services Authority.

We are determined to ensure customers receive the highest standards of service and we have therefore taken swift action to address the issues identified by our review, Chief Executive Richard Harpin said.

We have commenced a programme to retrain staff. We will resume marketing once we are confident that our sales processes meet the standards that we and our customers expect.

HomeServe sells insurance cover for, and fixes, burst pipes, broken boilers and drains through a network of utility partnerships in markets that have little or no competition.

The group, which is worth around 1.6 billion pounds ($2.5 billion), added that it remained on track to deliver market forecasts for full-year profit.